Arc Seven

Truth

Chapter One

Wulfric Shaw told us that Everdark gained its power from its centers of faith. Without them, it would be nothing.

Elsa's diary

The Imperial Palace,

Arendelle

December 12th, 1843

"Your child is due in two months' time. It is ridiculous to believe that you are still fit to run this kingdom," the stern woman said, heels clicking on the floor as she passed Anna's desk.

Anna placed one hand on the thick oak frame and the other on the underside of her stomach as she stood, keeping her balance and doing her best to appear graceful.

"A preposterous claim," she replied, lidding her eyebrows in that imperious way Elsa was so good at. "The duties of my office test my mental capacity, not that of my body. Do you claim that my pregnancy has dulled my mind, Sorise?"

Sorise Linkletter swiveled to face the empress, hands on her hips. She looked Anna up and down with appraising eyes. Anna did her best not to waver underneath them.

"No," she said. "Although others might make that claim. What say you to them?"

Anna frowned, rolling the knuckles of one hand through the small of her back. Some days, she felt like an overripe gourd. However, when Elsa had asked her to do this, Anna had committed. And she didn't waver for an instant in her sense of duty.

"I would tell them that they have no place questioning my authority," she said matter-of-factly. "I have a heritage of leadership, and I am educated to play the part. I know more about statecraft than most could hope to –"

"Your majesty," Sorise interrupted, "in these trying times, we do not need a leader who understands the theory of leadership, we need a strong leader! A mother isn't exactly who we need to stand up to the enemy for us."

Anna felt a stab of annoyance. "Well, while I might not have the longest practical record, I think that –"

"No," Sorise said, shaking her head. "Never begin a statement like that by giving up ground. You're just conceding half of the argument to your opponent."

Anna slumped back down into her seat and sighed. "Well, it's not a lie, Sorise. I don't have four years of experience at this like my sister."

Sorise Linkletter took a seat on the other side of the desk and nodded. Her argumentative air had dissipated, leaving behind a woman who looked substantially more matronly than before.

"That is true, your majesty. I'm not asking you to hide your faults. A good ruler must admit to her own inadequacies, but a great ruler will do so in a way that demonstrates her capacity to outweigh those inadequacies."

"What do you mean?" Anna said, knowing that Sorise liked to speak in generalities before tailoring a specific example to their present situation. The royal advisor drummed her fingers on the desk in thought for a few moments before replying.

"Well, you notice I did not say that you must overcome your inadequacies."

"Yes," Anna replied.

"Telling you that you must overcome your inadequacies is platitudinous and wrong," Sorise said. "You cannot, for example, change the fact that you are with child. You cannot change the fact that you are barely more than a child yourself. You cannot change the fact that you are not an experienced head of state."

"Don't just stick to my positives," Anna said jokingly.

"This is not laughing matter, your majesty," Sorise said, though a small twinkle in her eye acknowledged Anna's playfulness. "You must be prepared for any ruler you wish to bring into the Unified Empire to question your merits on any or all of these issues, and you must be prepared to answer for them."

"I know," Anna said. "But I don't know what to do. I mean, you said it yourself. I can't change those things."

"That is why, your majesty," Sorise said, adjusting a small stack of papers on the desk so that they lay flush with the edge, "you must be prepared to explain to these questioning rulers why the positive qualities you possess outweigh the negatives."

"Well, what positive qualities do I have?" Anna asked.

Sorise smiled and raised an eyebrow. "I don't know, your majesty. Why don't you answer that question for yourself?"

Anna sighed. She used to feel embarrassed with self-promotion, but she'd gotten past that. Now it just made her feel uncomfortable. Because the truth was, there probably was someone better-suited to run the Unified Empire than her. Like Charles Vander, or maybe Queen Arianna. Someone who'd spent years in power, someone who looked the part more than she did.

But Anna just happened to be the one Elsa and Hans had chosen to put in charge. Sometimes, Anna thought that they'd chosen her because Elsa was confident that she'd be able to use Anna like a puppet. Elsa wasn't exactly the type to give up authority.

"Well?" Sorise said.

Anna frowned. She knew all the answers that she was supposed to give by now, but she decided to say something else. "I'm Elsa's sister."

Sorise was surprised. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean that the three archmages are really the only people left who can save the world, and I'm related to or friends with all three." Anna still didn't like calling Hans a friend, but Elsa trusted him, and she didn't really have the liberty of refusing his help.

"An interesting approach, your majesty," Sorise said. "But I fear that the leaders of nations who haven't experienced the invasion as personally as Arendelle might have a harder time than I of appreciating the nuance of your argument."

"I know," Anna said. "That's exactly the problem that we had in Corona. You can lead a person to truth, but you can't make them believe it."

Sorise frowned. "Do you believe your own words, your majesty?"

"What? That Elsa, Hans and Odette are the only people left who can save the world?" Anna asked. "I guess so, yeah. Kristoff tried his best to stand up to Everdark's army, and he got killed for it."

She almost kept the bitterness out of her voice.

Sorise smiled in a sad, kindly sort of way. She reached a weathered hand across the table and took one of Anna's, brushing the back. "He was very brave, dear child. And very noble. And I do not think that the time is up for ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Don't count out your own abilities, Anna. You are more than Elsa's sister."

Anna looked up, and smiled, blinking a tear away. "Thank you, Sorise."

The royal advisor let go of Anna's hand and stood. "You have other duties to attend to, your majesty, and I shan't keep you from them. Think upon my question, however, because I will ask you again tomorrow. Why do your advantages outweigh your shortcomings, and what are those advantages? I want a good answer."

She stopped near the doorframe. "Look inside yourself, and I suspect that you'll find them."

xxx

Later that day, Anna sat in the situation room beside Odette. There were ten military men in the chamber, half of whom she was still getting to know, because they'd come from the Coronan army. Together, they formed the generals of the Unified Empire's armed forces. A map of Europe and northern Africa was pinned to the large wooden table, but they weren't using it today. Odette was talking.

"I've made contact with Kariena Tae in London," Odette said, "and the wargate seems to be functioning just fine. We'll take some field observations over the next few days. She has some unfortunate news, however: Hans hasn't made it to London yet. As a matter of fact, the entire train that he'd been riding never arrived."

There were looks of concern around the table.

"What was the ETA supposed to be on the train?" One man asked.

"It was supposed to arrive three hours ago, their time," Odette said. "She realized that it hadn't shown up about two hours ago. The train was covering a hundred and fifty miles. It will be a while before she finds out what happened to it."

Murmurs.

Anna laced her hands together and looked around. "Well, men, what are our options?"

"I recommend that we deploy a special forces unit through the wargate to perform a find-and-rescue, your majesty," General Tarson said crisply. The graying man leaned forwards in his seat. "Miss Tae's mission is too valuable to compromise. We can't spare her for the recovery."

"Excuse me, your majesty," Wallace interjected. He was a traditional man from Arianna's army. His face was perpetually red, though he wasn't particularly overweight. "But we can't just send a bunch of armed men into London. We'd cause a debacle. Mind you, we're going to be trying to win their favor, and we don't want to start off on the wrong foot."

"Your majesty, my men can blend," Tarson said. There was certainly a professional rivalry between the two men, the de facto leaders of their own halves of empire's forces. Anna was concerned that the separate armies weren't integrating as well as she'd hoped. "They're trained for this sort of thing."

Wallace opened his mouth to argue further, but Anna held up a hand.

"Thank you both. Are there any other suggestions?"

"Well, your majesty," said Filipe, another Arendane, "outside of letting Miss Tae abandon her mission and go after him, none that I can see. And of course, we don't want her doing that."

"Are we sure that Mr. Westergaard needs saving?" Said another man. "I mean, he literally came back from the dead not two months ago."

"Well, he doesn't think that's going to be happening again soon," Anna said. "But the suggestions are noted. Anything else for me?"

There was silence for a few moments, and then Anna nodded to them. "Thanks, guys. Keep me updated on the situation in Egypt. If Elsa contacts you, I want to know about it. Okay?"

"Yes, your majesty," came the reply.

"All right, see you later," Anna said, taking Odette's hand to stand and walking out of the chamber with her sister's lover.

"He'll be fine," Anna said reassuringly as they walked away from the situation room. They stepped around a pair of harried looking aides. She knew that inexplicably, Odette and Elsa liked Hans. She wasn't sure what he'd done to charm them, but it had worked.

"I know," Odette said. "He always manages to pull through these things. I'll feel better when we hear from Elsa, too."

Anna felt a bit guilty. Though Elsa and Odette were engaged to be married, they'd barely seen each other for the better part of two months. Elsa was needed on the front lines, fighting bad guys, and Odette was needed at home, managing the ever-growing system of portals that connected the center of the empire to its expanding limits. The day of their engagement, Elsa had told Odette that she hoped to be married by Christmas, but that was starting to look like a naïve dream now.

"I'm sorry about that, too," Anna said. "I know you miss her."

Odette smiled gratefully as they rounded a corner in to the more residential part of the 'palace.' They hadn't moved from the late magistrate Namar Sadden's manor, but they'd also gotten sick of calling it that, and the empire had needed a base of operations anyway, so they'd made the christening the same day as Anna's coronation.

"Thanks, Anna," she said, taking her glasses off rubbing them with the edge of her blouse. "At first, I missed the, uh, contact, but now I just wish I could talk to her."

Odette seemed to realize that she was talking to the person who'd assigned Elsa to a mission in Egypt, and she quickly added, "But, I mean, I know that what she's doing is very important. I mean, we're all working very hard to pull this together. You know what I mean."

They reached the door to Anna's study, and she placed a hand on Odette's shoulder. "It's okay to tell me that you're frustrated and you miss her, Odette. I would too, in your situation. When she gets back, I promise that I'll give you both two weeks before I give her another assignment."

Odette blushed. "Two weeks? Oh, I don't know, Anna, that's very generous of you, but I'm not sure –"

"The bad guys can wait a few days," Anna said. "You're allowed to want things for yourself, Odette. And I feel guilty, snatching her away from you for all this time."

Odette smiled. "Thanks, Anna." She started to turn to leave, but stopped herself. "Oh. Did you meet with Sorise earlier?"

"Yes," Anna said. "Remind me to ask Montaigne where he found that woman, again."

Odette winced. "That bad?"

"It'll build character," Anna said. Sorise was determined to be viewed as a biddy by everyone except Anna and Montaigne, and though Anna wasn't sure why, she decided that it wasn't her place to decide. Besides, even if Sorise did have a soft interior, she could still be prickly sometimes.

"Do you think she's making you into a 'fine ruler?'" Odette said, affecting the woman's lofty accent.

Anna laughed. "Yes, I'm quite sure."

xxx

Elsa crouched behind the mason lip at the edge of her rooftop overlooking the market square. A blazing sun beat down upon her, making even her loose, mobile clothing feel stifling and uncomfortable. She adjusted the hood drawn over her head and hazarded a glance over the side. It was midday, and the square was flush with villagers exchanging wares. Crowded enough that there were a million different places for her target to disappear.

Elsa was in a little village along the Nile, leagues away from the more modern cities in the north. Here still lived a farm-and-market way of life. She narrowed her eyes as she swept her gaze around the brightly colored textiles adorning market stalls.

There, she thought, noticing a man with a sheaf of papers underneath his arm step out of the mosque on the far end of the square. His robes looked much like those of any of the other preachers in this village, save a nonobtrusive black sash tied about his waist. He would have a distinctive tattoo on his chest as well, and he would have a few guards blended somewhere into the crowd. If Elsa hadn't known who her quarry was beforehand, she wouldn't have been able to pick him out of a crowd.

At least I am looking for a man, she thought, adjusting the black scarf tied around her head. The women in the square wore one quite like it, concealing their entire faces, save a slit around the eyes. Elsa ran in a crouch to the east side of the building and placed one hand on the side, swinging over the edge and landing in a lithe crouch in the shadowed alleyway between the buildings. Then she ran to the edge of the alleyway and peered into the square again.

A steady stream of people flowed past for several seconds. She lost track of the Priest of Entropy.

Damn.

Elsa fell into step with the people walking past, matching their pace and lowering her head. All around her, the conversations continued uninterrupted. She fell slightly behind them and merged into another group walking the other way, deeper into the square. One of the men said something to her, but she shook her head and kept walking. The man shrugged and turned away.

There he is, she thought, picking up the trail again as she saw the priest heading out of the market to the north. She picked up her pace as much as she could while remaining discreet and followed him. Elsa was taller than most of the women in the square, and although her skin had tanned enough that the thin slit visible through her scarf might not immediately mark her as an outsider, her blue eyes certainly would. So she tried to keep her head down.

The priest had brought allies to this little village. Elsa didn't know how many, but it wasn't enough to make the population nervous. Hell, she wasn't even sure why Everdark would care about trying to sway little villages like these. They wouldn't be necessary to take the government down. She could only guess that there was something here that she wasn't aware of yet. They weren't far from the Valley of the Kings – perhaps there was a magical artifact waiting to be recovered?

Something at the edge of Elsa's vision caught her attention. Movement, in the crowd, that seemed out of place. She hurried her pace more, giving up discretion. They'd already found her. She turned into an alleyway and broke into a run, hearing a shout of surprise. She burst out into the street below the market and started to sprint in the direction the priest had gone, hazarding a glance over her shoulder just in time to see three men in dark clothes dash out of the alleyway after her.

So much for being sneaky, she thought. Hans would have been able to assassinate the priest. Elsa had never been good at blending. She threw a bolt of ice over her shoulder, not caring if it hit. She just wanted to slow them down. They reached a corner and she dashed around it, back onto the road that the priest had taken. She came out onto that street and whipped around. It was empty, save a group of children kicking a dusty leather ball around. They glanced over at her, but she was already in motion again, running towards the only nearby building that wasn't residential, a little one-story library.

She threw open the door and stepped inside, surprising the librarian as she slipped behind a shelf and knelt near the ground.

"Get on the floor," she said with what she hoped was enough urgency that he'd get her general meaning, even if he didn't understand her words. She heard him scrambling around behind the desk.

A few heartbeats later, she heard loud footsteps and rough shouting. It was time to fight. Elsa extended her hand and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and imagining her blade materializing in her hand. There was a rush of cold air, and Rimeheart fell into her hand, releasing a few lazy snowflakes that spiraled towards the floor. It appeared as a long, curved knife, rather than a full sword, a trick that Elsa had figured out only a few weeks before.

She turned and started to pad towards the footsteps.

One man stepped into the same aisle as her, and Elsa leapt forwards, ramming her knife into his chest and twisting, tearing it out and bringing her free elbow into his neck and her knee up into his side. He screamed and collapsed against the bookshelf, rattling it and sending a stream of dusty books to the floor. She heard a shout and a gunshot. Wood splintered near her. She ducked and rolled to the edge of the aisle, pressing herself around the side of another bookshelf just as the other two men discovered their fallen friend.

Elsa took a deep breath, and reached up. If she stretched, she could just barely reach the top of the shelf. She raised one leg and a little, icy platform appeared beneath her foot, holding in the air just long enough for her to boost herself up and scramble on to the top of the shelf. She let it fade as the men reached her end of the aisle and peer about. They'd heard movement, but they were looking near the floor.

She peered down at them. Then she rolled over the side and landed in a crouch behind them. They glanced back and she sprung up, her knife flashing brilliantly in the air. Three quick strikes sprayed blood artfully into the air, and the men collapsed beside their comrade.

She took a few deep breaths, and then walked towards the front of the room, looking back at the desk. She didn't see the librarian.

"Are you alright?" She asked.

Shakily, the old man raised his head over the edge of the desk.

"I'm sorry about this," she said, motioning towards the dead men on the floor. "I did not mean to make your library a place of violence. But these men were after my life."

She saw something in the man's face and realized that he understood her. "You can understand English?"

He nodded but didn't speak. Maybe he didn't feel comfortable speaking it.

"Then you know that these men aren't from here," she said. "Foreigners."

He nodded again.

"I'm hunting their leader," she said. "Do you know how to find him?"

The man stared at her. Maybe he hadn't gotten that.

"Do you know the man they follow? A fake holy man?"

The man nodded. Good.

"He left your mosque today with some papers. I think that they were what he came here for. He is leaving now. Do you know where he will go?"

The man thought for a few moments, almost long enough that Elsa wondered if she'd lost him again. Then he stood a bit straighter and pointed north. Towards the Valley of the Kings.

"Thank you," she said, and ran from the store.